C/*7*  If 


Jportoarti  jftobement  tn 
H>ome  jffltsstons 


“Speak  to  the  children  of  Israel,  that  they  go  forward.” 

Exodus  14  : is. 


A Sermon  by 

William  Pierson  Merrill,  D.D. 

Preached  in  the  Brick  Presbyterian  Church 
New  York,  March  8,  1914 


The  Board  of  Home  Missions 

of  the 

Presbyterian  Church  in  the  U.  S.  A. 
156  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 


No.  1202 


FOREWORD 

'C'VERY  one  interested  in  home  mis- 
sions  will  be  glad  to  read  this  ser- 
mon, published  with  Dr.  Merrill’s  con- 
sent. Members  of  the  congregation  who 
heard  it  delivered  on  the  occasion  of 
their  recent  home  mission  offering  have 
urged  that  it  be  printed  and  distributed. 
It  is  so  cogent  a presentation  of  funda- 
mental home  mission  principles  that  we 
are  very  glad  to  have  the  opportunity  of 
giving  it  to  the  Church. 

Charles  L.  Thompson. 


3 


THE 

FORWARD  MOVEMENT 
IN  HOME  MISSIONS 


“ Speak  to  the  children  of  Israel,  that  they  go 
forward." 


IET  me  confess  at  once  that  I take 
. this  text  as  a motto,  rather  than  as 
a subject.  I shall  spend  no  time 
over  the  text  itself.  Nor  shall  I say  a 
word,  even  by  way  of  introduction,  about 
the  passage  of  Scripture  from  which  it 
comes,  or  the  situation  in  which  Moses 
and  his  people  were  when  this  stirring 
summons  came  from  God.  Moses  was 
one  of  the  greatest  of  men,  and  the 
movement  he  led  was  one  of  the  very 
few  permanently  significant  movements 
in  human  history ; but  the  Word  of  God 
reminds  us  that  “a  live  dog  is  better  than 
a dead  lion.”  And  I covet  every  minute 
of  the  possible  sermon  time  to  make 
more  vivid  and  real  to  our  minds  a move- 
ment of  our  own  day  and  place,  to 
arouse  your  hearts  and  my  own  to  the 
call  of  God,  “Speak  to  the  Presbyterians 
of  America,  that  they  go  forward,  refus- 
ing to  stop,  or  to  retreat,  but  going  on,  in 
their  work  for  the  redemption  of  the 
people  of  America.” 

Last  spring,  at  the  meeting  of  the 
General  Assembly  in  Atlanta,  I heard 
Dr.  Thompson,  the  veteran  Home  Mis- 
sionary Leader,  say,  in  one  of  the  most 
thrilling  addresses  to  which  I have  ever 
listened,  “We  will  do  anything  the 
church  tells  us  to  do  except  one  thing. 
We  will  go  slow,  if  you  tell  us  to.  We 
will  stop,  if  you  say  we  must.  But  we 
will  not  back  up.  For  there  are  rocks 
behind  as  well  as  ahead,  and  we  might 
smash  our  rudder.”  It  is  in  that  spirit 
that  I would  try  to  set  before  you  the 
Home  Mission  work  of  our  church,  and 
the  right  attitude  of  the  members  of  the 
church  toward  it. 

I suppose  a man  of  Pauline  type  would 
count  it  a privilege  to  be  allowed  to  lay 
before  a body  of  Christian  people  the 
needs  of  any  good  cause.  Paul  did  not 
hesitate  to  close  his  most  doctrinal  and 
5 


spiritual  letters  with  an  appeal  for  a 
large  offering,  nor  does  he  reveal  any 
consciousness  of  incongruity  in  passing 
suddenly  from  a lofty  discussion  of  im- 
mortality with  the  words,  “Now,  con- 
cerning the  collection,  brethren.”  But 
even  an  ordinary  man,  quite  unlike  Paul 
in  ability  to  “glory  in  tribulation,”  might 
eagerly  welcome  the  opportunity  to  let 
people  know  how  strong  and  worthy  is 
the  work  of  Home  Missions,  as  our 
church  is  planning  and  attempting  to  do 
it.  For  the  plans  of  our  leaders  in  the 
Board  of  Home  Missions  are  farseeing, 
and  their  efforts  well-directed;  and  the 
people  of  the  church  do  not  always  real- 
ize that  the  work  of  Home  Missions  is 
far  greater,  and  calls  for  a larger  loyalty, 
than  ever  in  the  past. 

Serious  and  significant  changes  have 
lately  taken  place  both  in  the  scope  and 
in  the  methods  of  Home  Missionary 
work.  In  the  days  of  our  fathers,  that 
work  was  comparatively  simple  and 
homogeneous.  The  one  great  function 
of  the  Board  was  that  of  distribution. 
America  consisted  of  a few  well-estab- 
lished centres  of  population,  and  a great, 
expanding,  growing  country.  The  pic- 
ture that  instinctively  stood  out  before 
the  eye  as  one  heard  the  words,  “Home 
Missions”  was  the  new  town  “on  the 
frontier,”  where  men  were  busy  building 
their  homes,  their  cities,  their  business 
enterprises,  their  scanty  resources  being 
wholly  needed  for  these  prime  require- 
ments. Yet  the  church  of  God  must  get 
and  keep  a place  in  the  lives  of  these 
people.  If  they  could  not  maintain 
churches,  the  Christian  people  of  the 
settled  districts  must  help.  So  the  work 
was  organized  on  the  basis  of  the  scrip- 
ture saying,  “He  that  had  much  had 
nothing  over;  and  he  that  had  little  did 
not  lack.” 

That  work  is  still,  and  probably  al- 
ways will  be,  a very  large  part  of  the 
enterprise  of  Home  Missions.  To  plant 
churches  in  new  communities,  to  main- 
tain church  privileges  in  communities, 
whether  new  or  old,  which  cannot  pro- 
vide them  for  themselves, — is  the  pri- 
mary task  of  the  Home  Mission  Board. 

6 


It  has  also  been  the  aim  of  the  Home 
Mission  Board,  throughout  its  history, 
to  direct  missionary  operations  among 
the  exceptional  elements  of  our  popula- 
tion. The  conscience  of  the  white  man 
has  always  felt  a measure  of  uneasy  re- 
sponsibility for  the  red  man  who  was 
dispossessed  by  our  coming  to  these 
shores.  From  the  days  of  Eliot  and 
Brainerd  to  the  present  hour  the  church 
has  felt  bound  in  honor  to  reach  the 
Indians  with  the  Gospel  of  Christ.  That 
work  also  is  a permanent  element  in 
Home  Missionary  operations.  Indians 
are  increasing  rather  than  diminishing 
in  numbers,  and  many  of  them  have  as 
yet  no  contact  with  the  Gospel. 

We  have  responsibilities  also  toward 
the  mountain-dwellers,  whose  cramped 
life  needs  the  freedom  of  Christian  and 
intelligent  preaching;  toward  the  people 
of  Alaska,  and  the  West  Indies,  and  the 
Spanish-speaking  Southwest ; toward 
the  masses  of  men  in  the  logging  camps, 
who  can  be  saved  from  becoming  brutes 
only  by  living  witnesses  among  them  to 
the  grace  of  Christ.  Our  Board  of 
Home  Missions  is  our  agent  and  leader 
in  our  attempt  to  meet  all  these  respon- 
sibilities. “If  any  man  see  his  brother 
in  need,  and  shutteth  up  his  heart  against 
him,  how  dwelleth  the  love  of  God  in 
him?”  And,  because  we  are  Christians, 
we  believe  that  the  deepest  needs  are 
needs  of  the  spirit.  We  must  therefore 
support,  with  extreme  devotion,  a work 
which  is  simply  our  most  efficient  means 
of  supplying  the  spiritual  needs  of  the 
neediest. 

But  late  years  have  witnessed  a signif- 
icant and  serious  change  in  Home  Mis- 
sionary policy.  It  is  not  that  the  old 
functions  have  been  abandoned.  They 
are  being  discharged  as  faithfully  as 
ever.  But  new  phases  of  effort  have 
been  added ; and  a new  sense  has  awak- 
ened of  the  proper  scope  and  function 
of  the  Home  Missionary  work  of  the 
church. 

I have  said  that  the  word  “Home 
Missions”  instinctively  called  up,  to  the 
minds  of  our  fathers,  a picture  of  a 
frontier  town,  or  a new  farming  com- 
7 


munity,  with  the  missionary  walking  or 
riding  about,  holding  little  services  at 
scattered  points,  trying  to  keep  bright 
the  spark  of  Christian  life  in  the  hearts 
of  the  farmers  or  villagers.  I suppose 
some  such  picture  would  arise  in  the 
minds  of  many  in  the  church  to-day, 
when  the  word  “Home  Missions”  was 
spoken,  though  some  would  be  carried  to 
the  mountains  of  Carolina  or  Tennessee, 
and  some  to  Indian  Reservations.  But 
to  those  who  know  best  the  story  of  re- 
cent years  of  Home  Missionary  evolu- 
tion, the  word  would  call  up  very  dif- 
ferent pictures.  It  would  take  their 
thoughts  to  Ellis  Island,  to  the  crowded 
foreign  quarters  of  our  great  cities,  to 
factories  where  masses  of  men  labor  and 
dimly  grope  after  principles  of  indus- 
trial and  social  justice,  to  rural  districts 
where  once  religion  had  its  favored 
dwelling,  but  now  the  higher  life  has 
fallen  asleep.  In  brief,  the  word  takes 
us  into  the  thick  of  the  problems  of 
America  to-day ; the  outstanding  fea- 
tures of  the  work  of  our  Board  of  Home 
Missions  are  its  Departments  of  Social 
Service,  of  Immigration,  of  Church  and 
Country  Life.  More  significant  even 
than  the  appearance  of  these  new  ob- 
jects is  the  emergence  of  a new  policy, 
a new  conception  of  the  scope  and  func- 
tion of  the  Board  which  plans  and  di- 
rects the  home  mission  of  our  church. 
In  former  days,  the  Board  of  Home  Mis- 
sions was,  above  all,  the  distributing 
center,  a reservoir.  Its  chief  functions 
were  to  gather  and  impound  the  needed 
financial  resources,  and  then  to  let  them 
flow  wisely  and  broadly,  where  they 
would  do  the  most  good.  It  was  the 
medium  of  communication  between  the 
churches  that  could  give  and  the 
churches  that  needed  to  receive. 

But  that  conception  of  the  place  and 
function  of  the  Home  Mission  Board 
has  given  way  to  another.  Instead  of  a 
mere  distributing  center,  skillful  in  ex- 
tracting money  from  those  who  have  it, 
and  wise  in  directing  its  flow  to  the  places 
that  need  it  most,  the  Board  of  Home 
Missions  has  become  more  like  the  staff 
of  a great  army.  Its  function,  as  it  sees 
8 


it,  is  to  direct  the  church  in  the  Chris- 
tianizing of  our  nation.  It  must  find  the 
facts  about  the  national  life,  must  see, 
and  foresee,  and  make  the  church  see. 
To  that  end  it  must  put  much  of  its  force 
and  means  into  study,  into  setting  ex- 
perts at  work,  into  experiments,  into 
surveys  of  conditions,  investigations, 
tests.  It  must  be  the  churches’  “Secre- 
tary of  State  for  the  Home  Depart- 
ment its  task  calls  for  high  statesman- 
ship, not  for  mere  skill  in  distribution. 
Above  all,  the  church  must  know  what 
are  the  facts  and  factors  in  the  religious 
problem  of  America,  and  how  best  they 
can  be  successfully  handled.  Tradition- 
al methods  may  be  right  or  they  may  be 
wrong;  we  want  to  know.  And  who 
shall  get  the  information  and  give  it  to 
us,  if  not  the  Board  in  charge  of  our 
Home  Missionary  work? 

So  has  grown  up  a new  consciousness 
on  the  part  of  our  Board,  a new,  and 
very  much  more  serious,  view  of  its 
function.  In  former  days  the  Board 
seemed  to  a distant  Presbytery  a sort  of 
bank,  on  which  it  might  draw  to  supple- 
ment its  own  resources,  that  its  weak 
churches  might  have  their  necessary  def- 
icits made  up.  Now  the  Board  stands 
as  an  adviser,  ready  to  co-operate  with  a 
Presbytery,  or  a Synod,  in  facing  the 
problems  there  to  be  met,  studying 
conditions,  making  necessary  experi- 
ments, and  attempting  a scientific  solu- 
tion of  the  real  religious  problems  of  that 
territory.  Of  course  the  Board  stands, 
and  always  must,  as  the  means  whereby 
the  stronger  churches  play  brother  to 
the  weaker,  the  distributing  center 
through  which  needed  funds  flow  to 
needy  churches.  But  above  that  func- 
tion is  rising  the  new  conception  of  the 
mission  of  the  Board,  to  lead  the  church 
into  scientific  management  of  Christian 
work,  into  concentration  and  efficiency, 
to  plan  comprehensively  for  the  whole 
country,  to  study  present  conditions. 
Such  a Board,  leading  in  religious  policy, 
may  find  it  wise  to  appoint  and  employ 
men  who  do  nothing  directly  in  the  way 
of  evangelization,  or  of  helping  churches 
in  their  regular  work,  but  who  study 

9 


conditions,  form  plans,  make  ex- 
periments, arouse  sentiment,  enlighten 
the  mind  of  the  church  as  to  the  facts  of 
our  national  life.  It  may  find  it  wise  to 
expend  the  main  part  of  its  resources  in 
such  constructive  statesmanship  rather 
than  in  the  planting  and  maintenance  of 
churches.  It  will  discover,  and  uncover, 
the  problem  of  the  down-town  city 
church  in  an  alien  community,  and  will 
spend  thousands  of  dollars  in  an  experi- 
ment like  the  Labor  Temple,  turning 
over  the  work,  when  shown  to  be  a suc- 
cess, to  the  local  Presbytery.  It  will 
attempt  new  methods  of  work  among 
foreigners,  by  grouping  foreign  parishes 
under  American  leaders,  by  fellowships 
enabling  young  men  to  spend  months  in 
the  foreign  land  from  which  large  bodies 
of  our  citizens  come,  that  they  may  re- 
turn and  work  the  more  intelligently  and 
sympathetically  among  the  men  and 
women  of  the  races  so  studied.  It  will 
seek  points  of  contact  between  the 
church  and  the  laborers.  It  will  set  men 
investigating  and  agitating  with  regard 
to  the  problem  of  rural  life,  that  we  may 
not  only  maintain  churches  in  sparsely 
settled  communities,  but  make  them  effi- 
cient and  powerful  in  the  daily  life  of 
the  people.  These  things,  and  many 
others,  it  will  do.  Yet  no  one  of  these 
is  essential.  The  essential  thing  is  that 
the  Board  shall  be  a leader  in  the  posi- 
tive, constructive,  statesman-like  facing 
of  actual  problems,  that  it  shall  be  ready 
to  tell  the  church  what  experiments  are 
worth  making,  what  risks  are  worth 
taking,  what  must  be  done  first,  what 
path  is  best  to  take  if  the  church  would 
reach  most  surely  the  goal  of  an  evange- 
lized America. 

Now,  friends,  is  not  that  the  sort  of 
agency  we  want  our  Home  Board  to  be  ? 
Is  it  not  a far  better  and  worthier  con- 
ception of  the  functions  of  the  churches’ 
organization  of  its  Home  Missionary 
work  than  the  old,  simple  idea  of  a dis- 
tributing center,  a money-getter  and 
money-spender  on  pre-determined  and 
traditional  lines?  In  every  department 
of  life,  men  are  awakening  to  the  fact 
that  the  day  of  haphazard  has  gone,  that 
10 


organizations  content  to  drift  and  drib- 
ble and  run  on  in  old  grooves  and  ruts 
are  doomed.  We  should  welcome  in  the 
church  the  dawn  of  a consciousness  that 
the  times  demand  constructive  planning 
and  leadership.  There  should  be  a fresh 
heartiness,  a redoubled  support,  on  our 
part  for  a Board  that  is  coming  to  view 
its  functions  with  such  largeness  of  out- 
look, such  boldness  of  spirit,  such  real- 
ity and  resoluteness. 

If  that  is  our  attitude  toward  the  new 
spirit  and  policy  of  our  Home  Board, 
then  it  is  time  we  were  giving  to  the 
Board  such  deep  and  hearty  support  as 
we  have  never  given  in  the  past.  For 
the  Home  Mission  work  of  our  church 
is  in  a critical  position  just  now.  The 
new  policies  are  threatened.  I speak 
frankly,  for  it  is  time  the  people  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church  were  realizing  the 
situation.  I am  an  outsider,  and  what  I 
say  expresses  only  my  personal  estimate 
of  the  facts  and  forces  that  are  apparent. 
But  certain  of  the  facts  and  forces  are 
plain  even  to  an  outsider  who  will  give 
the  matter  any  real  attention. 

During  the  past  few  months  and  years 
there  has  been  developed  a determined 
opposition  to  the  modern  policies  of  the 
Home  Board,  a reaction  bent  on  forcing 
the  Board  back  into  its  old  function  of 
intermediary  between  the  churches  that 
have  means  and  the  churches  that  have 
needs.  Such  a reaction  was  inevitable. 
Men,  no  less  than  horses,  find  it  easier  to 
trot  in  the  ruts.  The  church  is,  wisely 
on  the  whole,  conservative,  distrustful 
of  radical  changes,  hard  to  stir  out  of 
accepted  ways.  Large  sections  of  the 
country  are  still  in  the  early  stages  of 
growth;  their  needs  naturally  seem  to 
them  the  most  urgent  of  needs.  In  put- 
ting into  operation  the  new  policies  of 
investigation  and  experiment,  the  Board 
has  found  it  necessary  to  spend  large 
sums  in  great  cities,  and  in  work  not  di- 
rectly affecting  the  mass  of  churches 
throughout  the  land.  It  is  inevitable  that 
churches  in  small  places,  cramped  by 
lack  of  funds,  should  protest,  and  feel 
that  the  Board  should  return  to  the  sim- 
ple and  sole  function  of  securing  and 

11 


distributing  the  money  needed  for  main- 
taining churches. 

The  reaction  is  natural  and  inevitable ; 
but  it  is  shortsighted,  narrow,  and  wrong. 
And  it  makes  the  demand  imperative 
that  those  in  the  Presbyterian  Church 
who  see  the  wisdom  and  strength  of  the 
new  spirit  and  policy  of  the  Board, 
should  give  to  the  work  just  at  the  pres- 
ent moment  a loyalty,  such  as  they  have 
never  before  shown.  The  attack  on  the 
Board  by  the  enemies  of  its  present  pol- 
icies was  sharp  and  determined  at  the 
last  Assembly.  It  has  been  renewed  dur- 
ing the  year.  The  battle  must  be  fought 
out  at  the  next  Assembly.  It  is  time 
that  all  who  believe  in  going  forward, 
all  who  want  to  see  the  church  move  out 
of  small  shop-keeping  into  statesman- 
ship, all  who  long  for  a church  big 
enough  to  meet  the  religious  needs  of  this 
great  country  of  ours,  should  fall  in  be- 
hind the  men  who  stand  for  the  larger 
vision  and  the  bigger  work  in  our  Home 
Mission  Board.  In  such  a crisis,  our 
offering  becomes  far  more  than  an  offer- 
ing ; it  is  a vote  of  confidence,  an  answer 
of  readiness  to  the  God  who  calls  us  to 
move  forward. 

I have  not  attempted  to  present  to  you 
the  work  our  Home  Mission  Board  is 
doing,  to  speak  of  details,  to  tell  stories, 
to  give  statistics.  There  is  very  much 
worth  telling  about  our  work  among  the 
Indians,  and  on  the  frontier.  There  are 
notable  facts  about  the  work  among  im- 
migrants, close  at  hand.  There  are 
striking  and  far-reaching  results.  A 
Waldensian  Missionary  in  Italy  found 
by  chance  last  fall  a community  where 
300  people  were  eager  to  receive  him  and 
the  Bible  teaching  he  brought.  He  traced 
their  awakening  back  to  one  man  who 
had  been  converted  in  an  Italian  mis- 
sion here  in  New  York  City,  and  had 
“lived  by  his  faith”  when  he  returned  to 
Italy.  This  is  but  one  of  many  facts 
and  instances  I might  have  set  before 
you,  as  justifying  the  appeal  of  this  work 
to  your  liberal  support.  But  the  appeal 
of  the  work  lies  deeper  than  statistics, 
and  facts,  just  now.  The  question  be- 
fore the  church  is  extreme  and  radical, 
12 


— Shall  we,  or  shall  we  not,  have  a Home 
Mission  work  worthy  of  our  church, 
worthy  of  our  country,  worthy  of  our 
age?  Shall  our  Board  be  set  forward  in 
its  strong,  farseeing,  heroic  policy  of 
statesmanship  and  efficiency,  or  shall  it 
be  set  back  and  confined  to  its  old  func- 
tion of  distributing  funds  for  the  con- 
ventional church  operations?  Do  not 
misunderstand ; I know  you  will  not ; no 
one  proposes  that  the  Board  shall  aban- 
don, or  reduce  its  work  of  planting  and 
sustaining  churches  in  communities 
which  cannot  maintain  their  own  relig- 
ious work.  That  must  always  be  the 
largest  work  of  the  church.  But  this  is 
the  issue, — shall  the  church  be  content 
to  do  this  work  haphazard  and  piecemeal, 
or  shall  it  encourage  its  Board  to  become 
the  leader  of  the  church,  the  pioneer, 
enabling  the  church  to  base  its  work  on 
known  facts,  to  advance  confidently 
on  paths  cleared  by  careful  experiments, 
to  see  its  task  comprehensively,  intelli- 
gently, and  then  to  do  it  efficiently  ? 
That  is  the  issue.  And  all  who  believe 
that  God  is  in  facts,  that  He  works 
through  laws,  that  He  honors  and  uses 
most  the  men  who  strive  to  serve  Him 
with  mind  and  soul  and  strength,  that  the 
great  need  of  our  day  and  country  is  that 
the  church  shall  be  big  enough,  far-see- 
ing enough,  intelligent  enough,  to  meet 
with  adequate  Christian  statesmanship 
the  intricate  and  acute  social  and  relig- 
ious problems  of  the  America  of  to-day, 
must  throw  every  available  ounce  of 
their  energy  and  influence  on  the  side  of 
maintaining  and  expanding  the  new 
policies  of  our  Home  Mission  work. 

This  is  not  the  main  reason  why  you 
should  give  liberally,  sacrificially,  to  the 
offering  to-day.  The  chief  reason  is  that 
what  you  give  means  that  men  will  hear 
the  Gospel  who  otherwise  would  not  hear 
it,  that  churches  will  be  opened  in  com- 
munities that  would  otherwise  remain 
godless,  that  worship  will  be  maintained 
in  little  centers  where  it  would  cease  if 
you  did  not  give,  that  without  your  gifts, 
camps  of  men  in  the  forests  of  the  north- 
west would  remain  in  sodden,  coarse 
monotony,  unrelieved  by  the  grace  of  the 

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Gospel;  that  great  sections  of  our  large 
cities,  where  foreigners  congregate, 
would  be  left  without  the  uplift  of  the 
free  grace  of  our  Protestant  Christianity. 
Your  failure  to  give  would  mean  that 
you  are  indifferent  to  the  great  command, 
“Go  and  make  disciples  of  all  nations;” 
indifferent  to  it  in  the  case  of  the  nation 
that  is  nearest  to  you  and  means  the 
most.  These  are  the  deep  and  great 
reasons  why  you  should  give  your  best 
and  utmost  to-day.  But  to  these  deep 
and  permanent  reasons  is  added  another, 
of  immediate  and  sharp  urgency, — the 
fact  that  your  support  this  year  means 
confidence  in  the  big,  heroic,  Christian 
plans  and  policies  and  spirit  of  our 
Board.  This  offering  is  your  chance  to 
“come  to  the  help  of  the  Lord  against 
the  mighty,”  to  set  the  influence  of  this 
church  decisively  on  the  side  of  the  for- 
ward movement,  and  against  the  back- 
ward movement.  James  Russell  Lowell 
caught  a gleam  of  the  true  meaning  of 
Christ  and  His  Gospel  when  he  spoke  of 
“the  cross  that  turns  not  back.”  We 
must  take  up  that  cross,  and  carry  it  for- 
ward in  our  own  land,  daring  harder 
tasks,  making  bigger  plans,  looking 
further  into  the  real  facts  and  forces  of 
our  national  life,  and  resolutely  believing 
that  the  Gospel  of  Christ  is  the  one  force 
adequate  to  solve  the  problems,  and  meet 
the  needs,  of  this  or  any  age ; and  that 
the  church  is  here  to  prove  the  wisdom 
of  God  and  the  power  of  God  in  bring- 
ing America  to  Christ.  In  that  spirit, 
knowing  that  we  are  called  to  the  more 
extreme  devotion  because  some  do  not 
see  the  facts  as  we  do,  let  us  make  our 
offering  to  Almighty  God  for  the  work 
of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  the 
redemption  of  our  own  country. 


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